THE ARMOURED CARS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 865, 17 November 1916, Page 6

THE ARMOURED CARS.

LAND IRONCLADS. MR WELLS'S FORECAST. Now that everything about the British "tanks" is of interest it is recalled that Mr H. (".. Wells in his short story, "The Land Ironclads," anticipated our new armoured fighting cars. This story was written and published some years before the present war was even dreamed of, and Mr Wells's land ironclad, with a searchlight to help it, was being used by an invading enemy, "firing shots ont or portholes in its back." Mr Wells describes the machines which he had in mind:— They were essentially long, narrow, and very strong steel frameworks carrying the engines and borne upon eight pairs of big pedrail wheels, each about 10 feet in diameter, each a driving wheel and set upon long axles free to swivel round a common axis. This arrangement gave them the maximum of adaptability to the contours of the ground. They crawled level along the ground with one foot high upon a hillock and another deep in a depression, and they could hold themselves erect and steady sideways upon even a steep hillside. The engineers directed the engines under the command of the captain, who had look-out points at small ports all round the upper edge of the adjustable skirt of 12-inch iron-plat-ing, which protected the whole affair, and who could a'.so raise or depress a conning tower set about the portholes through the centre of the iron top-cover. Over the Trenches.

It was believed, but in vain, that they could not cross the trench-cut ground.

And all the while that great bulk was crossing. When the war cor-1 respondent turned his glass on it again ii had bridged the trench, and its queer feet were rasping away at the further bank in the attempt to get a hold there. It tot its hold. It continued to crawl until the greater bulk of it was over the trench—un-1 til it was all over. Then it paused for a moment, adjusted its skirt al little nearer the ground, gave an un-: nerving "Toot, toot!" and came on ; abruptly at a pace of, sixi miles an hour straight up the gentle: slope towards our observer. On the southern side was the ela-| borate lacework of trenches and defences, across which these iron turtles, 14 of them, spreac'. out over a line of perhaps three miles, were now advancing as fast as a man could trot, methodically shooting down and breaking u ; any persistent knots of resistance. Here and there stood little clumps of men, outflanked and unable to get away,! showing the white flag, and the in-: vader's cyclist infantry was advancing now across the open in open order, but unmolested, to complete the work of the machines. So fari as the day went, the defenders al-' ready looked a beaten army. As soon as a gun came into play, >he monster turned itself almost end | on, so as to get the biggest chance of a glancing hit, and made not for the gun, but for the nearest point on its flank from which the gunners could be shot down. Just for a moment it seemed splendid, and then it seemed horrible. The gunners were dropping in heaps about their guns. To lay a hand on a gun was death. In another moment half a dozen surviving artillerymen were holding up their hands amid a scattered muddle of dead and wounded men, and the fight was done.

It is to be hoped, says a writer in the "Daily Chronicle," that Mr Wells's forecast of the success of the new machine will prove to have been as close to the truth as his anticipation of the machine itself.